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A Manhattan-based company that gathers consumer information is reporting today that for the three-month period that ended Dec. 31, U.S. citizens watched about 151 hours of TV per month.

 

According to The Nielsen Company, video viewing on the so-called “three screens” – TV sets, computer screens (the Internet) and mobile devices – hit an all-time high.

 

According to Susan Whiting, Nielsen’s vice chair, the American fascination with television and other video content is not easing up, as consumers keep turning to TV, Internet and mobile at record levels.

 

“Viewers appear to be choosing the best screen available for their video consumption, weighting a variety of factors, including convenience, quality and access,” Whiting said. “It is clear that TV remains the main vehicle for viewing video, although online and mobile platforms are an increasingly important complement to live home-based television.”

 

According to Neilsen’s “A2/M2 Three Screen Report,” Americans who watch video over the Internet consume another 3 hours of online video per month and those who use mobile video watch nearly 4 hours per month on mobile phones and other devices.

 

Let’s put all this into some worldwide context.

 

As TMCnet reported last week, while here in the United States, studies have emerged that Internet TV watching is on the rise – so that the number U.S. households who use the Web to watch TV broadcasts increased 100 percent from 2006 to 2008 – a Dallas-based research firm says that Europeans are showing some reluctance in adopting online viewing.

 

According to Parks Associates, broadband has indeed transformed video viewing habits in Western Europe, where more than 30 percent of broadband households have watched a film or TV program online in the past six months.

 

Yet, according to the firm, for all the countries surveyed – the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France – more than 80 percent of broadband households prefer a more traditional option for viewing video, including going to a theater or watching a DVD. Many consumers are watching video online only because of the availability of free content, both legitimate and illegitimate, the firm says.

 

According to Nielsen, digital video recorded and other time-shifted television is watched at double the pace as video online at 7 hours, 11 minutes per month. Yet in a potential indicator of how audiences could time-shift in the future, young adults (age 18-24) watch video on the Internet and on a DVR at the same rate – about 5 hours per month, according to the firm.

 

Nielsen also found that, except for the teenage years, viewing of traditional television increases with age, and that the use of video on the Internet peaks among young adults while viewing mobile video is highest in the teen years.